Wednesday, July 11, 2012

{ three weeks ago at this time 6.20.12 }

:: Wednesday, June 20th ::

When we woke up in paradise this morning, we had some more mimosas { we simply had to use up that orange juice! What better to pair it with than some champers? }, finished up the last of the oatmeal and were enjoying our breakfast dreaming on how far down the Oregon coast we'd get that day. Our plan was to mosey on down for one last day, then really put the petal to the metal and head into California to Lake Tahoe on Friday to make it there around noon to settle in before rehersal. Hunter gets a text from Kyle, the groom of the wedding. Kyle had said that he booked them for golf on Friday morning at 7am, to which we both laughed out loud, because we were hoping to get to Tahoe at like noon, at the earliest. Wellllll....when Kyle and sweet Heidi first got engaged, they had asked Aaron, Hunter's brother, to officiate the wedding. { Kyle, Aaron, Hunter and Jordan, Kyle's younger brother, were all really good friends in college. Next time you are bored, come over for wine. I can entertain you for hours with their college stories that came out of this trip! }. Aaron at the time happily obliged and booked a 3 bedroom, 5 bed, 3 bathroom town home for Aaron, Becky, Charlie, Hunter and myself. Well, low and behold, Becky got pregnant { yay! } and her due date was the weekend following the wedding. Needless to say.....they didn't make it to the nuptials. That was a really long winded way for me to tell you that because Aaron booked the town home, Hunter and I just assumed we had it starting Friday and were off a day on how long we had it for. We actually had it starting Thursday versus Friday like we had originally thought! Though a shower, toilet and oh, I don't know - a BED sounded like luxury at the time, I was so so sad that we only had one last night in the tent. We had been having an obvious BLAST for the past few days, I couldn't believe it was coming to an end! Hunter had to remind me time and time again, that just because we weren't camping anymore, didn't mean it was the END. "People travel internationally to vacation at Lake Tahoe, babe." Which was so true - I just needed to change my mindset! { But we were having sooooo muchhhh funnnn!!!! } With that little twist in the plans, we had to make some decisions and fast. I have been to a number of wineries in California before, and I thought it would be just so neat to visit Oregon wineries to see what they were like. Though it bit about 4 hours out of our day, we did sneak inland for a while to check 2 of them out! And I'm so glad we did.

We had already seen so so many wonderful sites in Oregon however, something about this twisty and turny drive into the wineries was so comfortable, beautiful and dreamy to me.

We ended up stopping at 2 different wineries. The first was a smaller, much more quaint winery. As was the second, I suppose, but we spent considerably more time at the second one. I could lose all concept of time chatting over flights of wine with the owners, aka complete strangers. The passion they have for their business is so admirable! Afterwards, we parked the truck next to this really wonderful river and made/ate our lunch. As we were sitting down at the river, toes in the water, throwing cherry pits into the river Hunter says "This really is the picture of summer, isn't it?" which was so fitting because it actually was the summer solstice that day! I really loved our little jaunt in to see more of what Oregon has to offer. What a beautiful state, that one.

This was the first, and last day that I took over and drove for any amount of time. I've had to drive from Denver to Steamboat a few times, and as beautiful as it is, the North Dakota in me haaaaates being behind the wheel on those twisty and turny roads! This is a girl who could pretty much put her car on cruise control and take a snoozer while driving from college, back to our home on the complete opposite side of the state, and never once make a turn or dramatic twist. I'm really not making that up - check it:

Anywayyyy - though I did give him an hour or so of driving relief, we both agreed that I'd be better off sticking to "The North Dakota" roads as we'd later coin them. Also, did you know my boyfriend has a river named after him? So modest that one never to mention it. ; >

Again, this day we weaved in and out of campsites, completely underwhelmed with each of them. We alllllmost settled for one spot, though beautiful was right next to a smaller highway. Not our style. So, we drove, and drove until we found our own beautifully remote spot next to a river!

We knew we had to get our camp set up, and dinner going quick because we needed serious zzz's that night for our unexpected long day ahead. So I set up the tent ALLLLL by myself! Excuse me while I pat myself on the back quick. ::pat, pat, pat::

All while Hunter fired up the stove, cracked some beers and got down to dinner biznass.

This spot was so dashingly serene and a great last night of camping for us on this particular road trip. We had a great dinner of pasta, kalamata olives, sundried tomatoes, fresh basil, and some parm cheese. We walked around and in the river during sunset, sometimes chatting, sometimes admiring the stillness, sometimes sneaking a kiss. It was wonderful. : ) We retired to the tent to play cards bug-free { this was the only spot of camping on the trip that bugs were an issue! } and drifted off to catch some zzz's before visiting our 3rd state together on the trip the next day!